Toads I think? I found them while doing lawn work. Anyone able to ID them?

Area is Southern Michigan

Enjoy the little amphibians though

These are Anaxyrus americanus.

I think I stumbled upon some kind of ichthyological forbidden knowledge. Opened up a book of names that were never meant to be read.

You've probably heard of "can-opener smoothdream", right? It's practically a meme by now.

But the thing is, it's a deep-sea fish. And deep-sea fish have historically not had English names because nobody drops them into the conversation over a hot cuppa. Sure, there's generic stuff like hatchetfish and barreleye, but when you want to refer to the actual fish you're probably saying such euphonious phrases as Diretmus argenteus, Sternoptyx diaphana, or maybe even Opisthoproctus soleatus.

So whence "can-opener smoothdream"? Certainly no non-ichthyologist has ever used that name. It's not even a direct translation of the scientific name Chaenophryne longiceps - that would be "long-headed gape-toad". Which to me is even cooler than "can-opener smoothdream".

But I digress. The "dream" bit comes from the anglerfish family Oneirodidae, from oneiros, "dream", because those marvelous fishes look like they came out of a dream (Pietsch, 2009).

Note that Pietsch (2009), more or less the anglerfish bible, uses English names at the genus level only. So Chaenophryne is the smoothhead dreamers genus but no mention is made of "can-opener smoothdreams". So no luck there.

Wikipedia, root cause of a lot of misinformation, has this to say.

"Longhead dreamer" is a far more accurate name. And in fact, despite Wikipedia prioritizing "can-opener smoothdream" (because it's funny?), the links listed use "longhead dreamer" and "smoothhead dreamer" as the name and "can-opener smoothdream" as an alternative.

So. Again. Where did "can-opener smoothdream" come from?

The answer, as it turns out, lies with McAllister (1990).

In the book A List of the Fishes of Canada, ichthyologist D. E. McAllister sought out to list every single fish known to Canadian waters, providing both an English and a French name.

And when there wasn't an English name, like for most deep-sea fishes, he arbitrarily gave them a name. And his names "differ in many instances from the widely accepted names" (Holm, 1998)

This had varying results. This is his name for one of the netdevil anglerfishes.

The humpback anglerfish or blackdevil anglerfish becomes a werewolf (????).

This one is just confusing.

The white-spotted lanternfish or Rafinesque's lanternfish instead becomes...

And most embarrassingly, the Mediterranean spiderfish gets saddled with something that "violates the tenet of good taste" (Holm, 1998).

This then is the original source of "can-opener smoothdream". It was invented by an ichthyologist in 1990, and has seen little to no use outside of how bizarre the name is.

Maybe McAllister's goofier names will catch on. Who knows? They certainly aren't very popular in the scientific community though.

References

Holm, E. (1998) Encyclopedia of Canadian Fishes (review). The Canadian Field-Naturalist, 112, p. 174-175.

McAllister, D. E. (1990) A List of the Fishes of Canada. National Museum of Natural Sciences, Ottawa.

Pietsch, T. W. (2009) Oceanic Anglerfishes: Extraordinary Diversity in the Deep Sea. University of California Press, Berkeley.

This is the hot tumblr discourse that I’m here for.

Day 2 in new flat. I am going to attempt to use... The contraption

Contraption lowered. This is the scariest part of contraption usage, once you release it the drop is very fast

Contraption loaded!! Here goes

Successful contrapting!!

important thing to note about the contraption: i have no idea how old it is. building is 19th century and it could potentially be an original feature. however you can buy ones that look just like it online so who knows. i know the previous owner didn't install it.

anyway reviews are in:

we like the contraption :)

I once lived in a flat in Edinburgh that had such a contraption. Trouble was that the air was so damp to begin with that nothing would ever dry. I think I slept in damp sheets for a year.

Olympic National Park, 4/7/2024

Pitcheresque 💛

Almost just went home after work today. I would have missed this.

There's a little patch of pitcher plants in a marshy area of my home away from home, and they're blooming now.

Happy World Frog Day from all of the Totally Normal Frogs 🐸

Okay so in my Computer Applications class we learned about conditional formatting in Excel, where you can change the color of a cell by inputting certain values.

We're supposed to use it to model heat gradients in metals, but I found a better application:

FROG ART

Very worthwhile application of this setting.

petition to bring back saying "huzzah!" when something goes your way and "alas." when it doesn't

Don’t think people already do this? I just checked, and I’ve been using ‘huzzah’ in posts on Facebook since 2008.

So it's a wastebasket taxon, then?

In essence, yes.

Level 1: But is it canon?

Level 2: I can fix the canon.

Level 3: I can make the canon worse.

Level 4: I can fill the canon with small, brightly coloured frogs.

OK what now

@markscherz

@demonfrogs

Source